Focused, not busy

Take a look around: everyone is multitasking. We’re doing more than we’ve ever done, attempting to fill every interstitial zone with more work.

We live in a busy world, one in which our value is often measured in productivity, efficiency, work rate, output, yield, GTD—the rat race.

Indians are well know for working more hours, but we are actually earning less. Busy has become the new norm. And if you’re not busy, especially in today’s workplace, you’re often thought of as lazy, unproductive, inefficient—a waste of space.

There is a vast difference between being busy and being focused. The former involves the typical tropes of productivity: anything to keep our hands moving, to keep going, to keep the conveyer belt in motion. It is no coincidence we refer to mundane tasks as “busywork.” Busywork works well for factories, robots, and fascism, but not so great for anyone who’s attempting to do something meaningful with their waking hours.

Being focused, on the other hand, involves attention, awareness, and intentionality. People sometimes mistake my focused time for busyness because complete focus apes many of the same surface characteristics as busy: namely, the majority of my time is occupied.

The difference, then, is I don’t commit to a lot of things, but the tasks and people I commit to receive my full attention. Being focused doesn’t allow me to get as much accomplished as being busy; thus, the total number of tasks I complete has gone down over the years, although the significance of each undertaking has gone up—way up.

Sure, sometimes I slip; sometimes I fall back into the busy trap that engulfs our culture. When I do, I make an effort to notice my slip-up, and then I course correct until I’m once again focused on the worthwhile aspects of life. It’s a constant battle, but it’s one worth fighting.